Families of 9/11 victims pursue billions in frozen Afghan funds

FAMILIES of people killed in the 9/11 attacks are asking for billions of dollars from Afghanistan’s seized foreign reserves as damage payments to settle a court case against the Taliban.

The White House will advise a court this week about whether the bereaved families should receive some $7billion (£5billion) of Afghan central bank funds locked in the Federal Reserve since the Taliban takeover in August.

Lawyers for the families say the money now belongs to the Taliban and should therefore go to them under a decade-old court judgment which found the militants liable for helping alqaeda, The New York Times reported.

But the seizure of money belonging to a country trapped in a humanitarian crisis in order to pay American claimants was condemned as “grotesque”.

The suspension of international aid to Afghanistan after the Taliban’s victory, as well as sanctions against the militant leadership, have tipped the country deeper into an economic collapse since the summer.

United Nations figures estimate more than three million Afghans cannot feed themselves and more than a million children are now at risk of starvation. A New York court in 2012 awarded families billions of dollars in damages against al-qaeda, the Taliban and many Iranian state organisations for their roles in the attacks. The Taliban had hosted Osama bin Laden while the 9/11 attacks were plotted.

The US justice department has been negotiating with lawyers for the families about a potential deal to divide up the money if the government supports their attempt to seize it. Fiona Havlish, whose husband worked on the 101st floor of the World Trade Centre’s South Tower, and Ellen Saracini, whose husband was a pilot on one of the hijacked planes, have called on US President Joe Biden to help them.

“Together with the others in our case, we obtained an enforceable money judgment against the Taliban and now call on President Biden to ensure the funds … go to us and not the terrorists who played a role in taking the lives of our loved ones,” they said.

Any decision to hand the money over would incense the Taliban, which two weeks ago wrote an open letter to the US Congress appealing for the funds to be unfrozen. It would also face criticism from Afghans and international officials who said it did not belong to the Taliban and would be better used trying to alleviate the country’s crisis.

One senior international official said it was “hard to imagine a more regressive transfer of wealth”.

‘We now call on President Biden to ensure the funds … go to us and not the terrorists’